The Washington Post, New York Times, and NY Daily News just won’t give up. Bernie keeps winning while they keep whining, ignoring him in coverage and bashing him on the back page, even after he hammered Hillary in eight out of the nine last contests. These jaded pieces are so strident they border on the boorish, painting the first populist since John Edwards and Howard Dean as a delusional, lying lunatic bent on sending the U.S. straight to Stalinist Russia. Did these papers rip that other Democratic Socialist (and top-tier POTUS Hall of Famer) FDR like this when he ran for Prez? Doubt it. Yet it’s quite clear this Clintonite crew is experiencing a visceral, knee-jerk reaction to Bernie’s New-New Deal, but why?

Tom Wolfe coined these types “Masters of the Universe” in Bonfire of the Vanities, his classic fictional case study of elite hubris. This current cast of vain-glorious characters recoils at the notion of Bernie’s revolution, which challenges business-as-usual in the corporate media establishment. Heck, if Bernie’s elected they might have to cover future elections on substance rather than gossip, gotcha-questions, and horse-race politics. Or cover corporate corruption the way their predecessor Walter Cronkite did instead of soft-pedaling it from their pedestals.

In their quest for harvesting eyeballs and cheap profits, mass media has contracted mass amnesia. Mainstream news has completely forgotten its sacred mission and public duty to constantly QUESTION the status quo rather than shamelessly and vigorously defend it as they do with Clinton. For the Washington Post, the case is hopeless so long as Amazon magnate Billionaire Bezos owns that dying paper. Honestly folks, would the current Post have pulled out all the stops to expose Watergate under its current regime? Pleeeease . . .

And we don’t need to read tea leaves to see that citizens on the left AND the right are fed up with a system that’s been ripping them off for two generations. The People are demanding change NOW, not next year, or next month, or next week, but NOW, so it’s high time the tone-deaf media started challenging the status quo instead of coddling it. Not only that, they should thank their lucky stars they live in a country where they still can. These guys should know journalists around the world get murdered every day for pushing back against power, yet they insist on denigrating Bernie’s revolution against a system that, ironically, gets less democratic by the day.

Granted, some Clintonites genuinely fear big change might disrupt the overall economy, but Bernie’s answer is: What economy? The current system may be working for them, but not for 99% of their fellow citizens. The bottom line is, despite all the elite media’s kicking and screaming, we really do need an FDR redux to fix forty years of disastrous, neo-liberal economic policy, and Bernie brilliantly fits the bill.

So when Hillary’s henchmen like Chris Matthews bitch that Bernie “makes promises he can’t keep”, it’s not just a lie but an insult to any American, liberal or conservative, demanding real change. Statements like these assume the American people aren’t capable of freeing their government from corporate tyranny, even via a grassroots groundswell of political pressure not seen since the Sixties. Apparently, Master-of-the-Universe-Matthews and other media honchos just don’t believe the American people have the juice to get the job done. Well, I don’t know about you, but I take that as a challenge, especially when it comes in the form of a patronizing dictum hurled at me (a mere mortal) from the lofty heights of Mt. Olympus. In fact, it makes me damn mad.

Establishment media pundits keep blabbing that Hillary is a “pragmatic” politician who will “bargain” with the bad guys, “get things done”, and avoid “pie-in-the-sky” progressive programs. These Bernie Bashers whine that Sanders’ bold platform (universal healthcare, free college, construction jobs, etc.) would be “dead on arrival” in the party-of-no (GOP) Congress. Okay . . . but anyone who reflects on the past 5 ½ years will see that the ultimate pragmatist (Obama) accomplished ZERO with Congress anyway.

So what difference does it make? I mean if Congress will block everything, why not elect a REAL progressive with a REAL program for economic reform? At least then the Democratic establishment would have to stop lying to us and give genuine progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren a chance to govern. In fact, history shows (Bernie preaches this daily) that truly progressive politicians spur massive Democratic dashes to the polls (look at what happened in New Hampshire). This means if Sanders is the nominee, a wave of Democratic Congressional candidates could coast on Bernie’s coattails into the House and Senate, retaking it from ossified, obstructionist Republicans (demonically possessed?).

Moreover, a true-blue Capitol Hill would empower a President Sanders to initiate the type of sweeping New Deal changes this tortured country sorely needs right now. And there would be no repeat of what transpired during the Obama Care fiasco, when captured Democrats like Senator Ben Nelson sold the store to insurance lobbyists, leaving Americans holding the bag (with a crappy healthcare law inside). Why? Because conservative voters purged purple-state “republic-RATS” two years ago, purifying the Democratic Party of these imposters. So the next crop of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will be bull-proof, true-blue progressives who will not only endorse Sanders’ FDR-esque proposals, but whisk them through Congress with a minimum of sell-outs attached. (Side note: Ben Nelson was rewarded for his Obama Care efforts with a job as chief of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Salary? A million bucks a year).

So the next time the Washington Post, New York Times or Daily News crows that Hillary will “get things done” and Bernie won’t, don’t be fooled. Bernie is the ONLY candidate who will get things done, because he’s the only real progressive running for president of the United States, which means he’s the only “Democrat” with coattails long enough to whip Republican majorities out of Congress.

Finally, code words like: “pragmatist, deal-maker, compromiser, bargainer, etc,” particularly when applied to politicians, and especially these days, are euphemisms for “experts” extremely adept at creating the APPEARANCE of progress, while really just spinning the wheels of state. These shibboleths should set off alarm bells for citizens who want real change instead of shadow dances, Kabuki theater, and puppet shows. The status quo has been spinning its wheels (and pulling our chains) far too long for anything else folks.